You cannot kill a Creed
by Mad about the Boro
Summary: Whilst in exile, Jedi Grand Master Yoda contemplates something that he once read as a Padawan & realises the just because the Jedi are gone, doesn't mean they will forever be lost to the galaxy & that ancient Creeds can still hold guiding wisdom. One-shot.


**You cannot kill a Creed **

Dagobah.

It is here, on Dagobah that he had went into exile. Taking refuge here under the swampy canopy of the petrified gnarltrees, to live out the rest of his days away from civilisation in simultaneous disgrace & penance for his failure.

For he had failed. Failed to protect his students. Failed to avenge his fallen Jedi brethren. Failed the entire galaxy, when he seceded defeat & fled from the galactic senate building to escape his sworn enemy, the Sith Master who now sat on his throne as the self-proclaimed Emperor of the Galaxy.

He had failed. The Republic he had sworn to defend was no more. The Jedi Order was all but destroyed. He should have seen it coming. The Chancellor had been behaving oddly for a while now, encouraging the senate to give him so many emergency powers, yet lamenting the 'need' for them. Not to mention the strange fixation he'd had with young Skywalker, ever since the boy came to the Temple at the tender age of 9. He should have known that something was up, but he had trusted in the senate, in the chancellor, in democracy. Now, the Galaxy was now held in Palpatine's tyrannical, iron grip; enforced by his ruthless apprentice, Darth Vader.

Palpatine must have been grooming him for years, steadily planting the seeds of doubt & darkness; nurturing those seeds until they gradually spouted, corrupting the shining beacon of light into a festering pit of darkness. Reducing the once great, if temperamental, Jedi Knight into a cold hearted Sith. Now, more machine than man.

Oh, how blind he had been, to not notice the signs. If he had, then perhaps he could have saved young Skywalker from his fate; & prevented all of this. The boy had come to him for advice, yet he had simply responded with his usual diatribe about non-attachment. To learn to let go of all that you fear to lose. A task that would be all but impossible for such an emotionally invested individual as Skywalker to achieve.

He had failed the boy, & the boy had sought guidance elsewhere, from his long time confident, Palpatine. He'd failed and now his beloved Jedi Order was gone. He was one of the last. Even from here on this remote world, he could sense the few other survivors slipping away one by one, becoming one with the Force.

He too would eventually join then. His days were numbered. His age, after 877 years of life, would soon be catching up with him at the worst possible time. That is if the ne Empire didn't find him first. Either way, he didn't have long left, & when he passed so too would the teachings of the Jedi Order, including their guiding philosophy, The Jedi Code.

There is no emotion, there is peace.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

There is no passion, there is serenity.

There is no chaos, there is harmony.

There is no death, there is the Force.

This code that had guided the Jedi for millennia would soon be forgotten. But there was one hope. It is something he had read once, when he was still but a Padawan learner under Master Gormo. It was not from a Jedi text as one would suspect, but one belonging to another, far older, Order which originated from the long lost home world of the human race. One that chose to work in the dark, to defend the light. Secretly guarding the people, working in the pursuit for peace, protecting their people from those that choose to threaten said peace. Peacekeepers in their own right, much like the Jedi. An Order that had long since been dissolved; the last remnants of which, he knew, became the original Jedi Shadows. This text, this 'Codex', was written by the onetime Mentor of this long forgotten Order; a man known as Altair Ibn La'Ahad. And although the original hand-written text had long since been lost to the ravages of time, it's teachings had been stored in some sort of primitive holocron that Altair supposedly built based upon designs he found from some 'Apple'.

This Codex was one of the few things that remained of Altair's Order & it's words were what gave the former Jedi master hope now. Altair had claimed that you cannot kill a creed. Even if you kill all of it's adherents, destroy all of it's writings. Some on, some day, will rediscover it. Reinvent it.

It was this thought that gave him hope now, in the twilight of his life. That even if the Jedi Order died, there light extinguished from the galaxy by the darkness of the Sith. Perhaps, someone, some day, would rediscover the Jedi Code; reinvent it & hopefully avoid the mistakes the Jedi had made.

When one is in exile, away from the excitement of civilisation. There is not much to do. In the past, he had often enjoyed times like these, used them for meditation; to contemplate the intricacies of the Force & the familiar maxims of the Jedi Code. But now, for possibly the first time, Yoda, Grand Master of the Jedi Order, started to contemplate another code. A Creed more accurately.

_Laa Shay'a Waqui'n Moutlaq Bale Kouloun Mounkine_.

And as he contemplates this Creed, Yoda can't help but wonder what would have happened if the Jedi had heeded these ancient words. Perhaps they would have realised the truth. Seen past the shadows of the darkside; past Palpatine's deceptions to see the monster that lay beneath the kindly mask.

As he continued to meditate on these long forgotten words, Yoda could not help but be struck by the wisdom that they held & lament the fact that he had not heeded them earlier. Perhaps they would not have been deceived & the Jedi Order, and the Republic, could have been saved; if only he had only accepted one simple truth. If only he had accepted that:

Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted.


End file.
